Thought I'd post this here to shore up my arguement against Continent-specific unit graphics (or how I'd think they'd be a bad idea once implimented)

I like the aesthetic idea also, but I'm afraid people would want x and x continent units better because, statisticly, they were better.

Take for example the B52 v. the TU-95 bear. In terms of maximum speed, the B52's max speed is 1,000 km/h, while the TU-95 goes 925 km/h max. From this, players would argue north american bombers should go faster than russian ones.

SSBNs, as another, The Delta III has 16 Nuclear missiles and goes 24knots submerged. The American Ohio (in SSBN config) has 24 nuclear missiles and manages 20knots. Therefore, American submarines must hold more nukes while Russian submarines go faster.

Further on this, the PLA-N "Xia" Class SSBN (of which there is only one) carries 16 nukes, 22knots submerged. Thus it should go as fast as the american submarine and carry as many as the Russian one, but Asian players can only have one (since India, to my knowledge, doesn't operate any SSBNs)

My examples above are what I WOULD NOT LIKE TO SEE if continent-specific icons are created. However, how likely do you think it will be that somoene raises this arguement...especially from folks wanting to turn Defcon into a sim?

Hmm. I basically agree with the points in the original post. However, I don't agree that features/changes shouldn't be considered simply because they could lead to bad changes in the future. Evaluate each change individually, like I believe IV is capable of doing, and the game will be fine.

The reason I dislike the idea of individual factional unit graphics is that it damages the simplicity and elegance of the game.

Maybe we should sticky a less-subjective "Commonly Posted Suggestions" thread to replace the "Bad Suggestions" one (which I think is important to have, but I can understand why some people would prefer not to sticky it). What do the moderators here think of that idea?

Basically, the "Commonly Posted Suggestions" thread would have the first post consisting of links back to threads that contain common suggestions. So, for example, the post would contain categories like this:

Then we direct players to post in existing threads if they have new, related ideas, rather than create new ones. We could make exceptions if someone comes in with a substantially new variation on an existing suggestion, but for the most part new instances of existing suggestions would be closed and directed to post in the existing threads.